JK 

.K4 



ICSFr,KOK,WILLlAl.£ 

Democracy and Efficiency. 
An Address at Harvard Univer- 
sity, March 29,1912 




Class_IKL^13_ 
Book uKl- 



63d Congress \ 
1st Session f 



SENATE 



/ Document 
t No. 202 



DEMOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY 



AN ADDRESS 



By 



HON. WILLIAM KENT 

AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
MARCH 29, 1912 






PRESENTED BY MR. OWEN 
October 1, 1913. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1913 




^^^t^ 



D. CF D. 
OCT B f91S 



DEMOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY. 



Recent days of the world have brought with them one thing that 
is new — the realizing sense, the ideal, of democracy. As far as 
anatomy is concerned, we of to-day do not differ much in brain 
capacity from a fossil skull recently discovered and which is be- 
lieved by geologists to be cotemporary with the Neanderthal Negroid 
type of man, who before this discovery was regarded as our ancestor. 
No one knows how far back dates the human brain adequate for 
progress. We can not show individuals or individual attainment 
higher than the man who existed in ancient Athens. We can not 
show philosophy or art higher than were produced 3,000 years ago. 
We are forced to look to society and social relationship, to human 
kindliness and charity suggested by Christian faith for development 
from this time henceforward. If this democratic tendency promises 
anything at all, it is that more people may aspire with reasonable 
hope for such conditions of life as may permit their fuller develop- 
ment. This is the promise of our day, and is found in the political 
creed to which onr Nation gives lip service at least. Better condi- 
tions depend upon our sane and timely answers to the unending inter- 
rogations as to the relative importance of the individual and of 
society — the position of the individual in society. 

The earlier evolution of free government came through the revolt 
of a select few against tyrants. This was the story down through 
the days of Magna Charta and through our Revolutionary War. It 
happened that the dominant classes of our people in colonial times 
were selected men who, being practically equal in education and 
financial status, while preaching the doctrines of human liberty, ap- 
plied those doctrines to themselves but not to their servants nor to 
those whom they deemed their inferiors, just as they applied the 
doctrine of religious freedom to themselves and denied it to Quakers 
snd Catholics. 

Step by step since that time we have been working toward the 
ideals which they professed and expressed in the great declaration 
and preamble, but which they did not entirely realize. 

In the world's history there have been found many forms of gov- 
ernment and many variations. In general terms they may be classi- 
fied as tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Up to the present time 
the efficiency of these forms of government have been in inverse 
ratio of the numbers doing the governing, and it is the present ineffi- 
ciency of democracy that particularly appeals to the friends of other 
systems. 



4 DEMOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY. 

No one can doubt but that tyranny may be an ideal form of effi- 
cient government, if two postulates be granted: First, a successive 
line of really efficient tyrants ; second, a guaranty that their efficiency 
be directed toward the common good. The failure of either of these 
to eventuate has caused the rejection of tyranny by all civilized 
nations. 

To a lesser degree the same thing is true of the rule of an oligarchy, 
whether military or plutocratic. The efficiency generated will be 
used in the interest of the governing class, just as under trusts and 
monopolies the efficiency of production is absorbed by the corpora- 
lions. The man that works on the sewer will receive no considera- 
tion from an oligarchy or tyranny, whether political or industrial. 

It does not particularly matter by what form of choice the rulers 
are selected. A despotism may be hereditary or elective, as may an 
oligarchy. 

Our American democracy has thus far been incoherently operated 
and, as money is the sign of coherent power, it is largely plutocratic 
in its tendencies. This is not to be wondered at, for wealth means 
comfort and leisure and the things that men most desire, if not given 
to ideals. If creature comforts and a measure of independence may 
be obtained through governmental agencies, there is naturally a 
strong pressure to secure them in that way. 

THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY. 

In speaking of woman's suffrage a very intelligent and high- 
minded man recently said that he saw no reason why women should 
vote, that he believed they had plenty of other duties to perform, 
that it would appear that there might be a proper " division of labor " 
between the sexes as concerned politics. This typical illustration 
shows an entire ignorance of the fundamental idea of democracy. 
There can no more he a '"''division of labor " in exercising the functions 
of self-governmerit than there can he a division of labor in those 
necessary bodily functions of breathing^ digestion^ or the action of 
the heart. 

In a sense all government is objectionable from the standpoint of 
the individual. It is objectionable because it means restraint, and 
the form this restraint shall take is just as much a choice of evils as 
we make when we choose between the spoils system, with its greater 
hypothetical efficiency, and the merit system, with its necessary 
elimination of executive ability, or when we choose between a theo- 
retically perfect medium of exchange in irredeemable paper money 
or the wasteful and extravagant gold standard, or when we choose 
between privately owned and operated public utilities, supposedly 
free from politics, and the same enterprises owned and operated by 
the public and for the public, with the waste and inefficiency that 
accompany scattered and sporadic management. And yet, in the 
public interest, we are obliged to choose the merit system, the gold 
standard, and, I believe, shall be obliged to choose publicly owned 
and operated utilities as the lesser evil or as the greater good. We 
rmist shift our viewpoint from the narrow confines and the brief life 
of the individual to tlie breadth and duration of society before we 
can thinh even in terms of the individual. 



DEMOCEACY AND EFFICIENCY. 5 

It has long been a saying, and it was part of Jefferson's creed, 
that the less government we could have the better for ns; that the 
least-governed people are the best-governed people. And yet, with all 
the obvious truth of this statement, we find ourselves apparently 
drifting away from putting it in practice. There is an increasing 
demand for control of the actions of men, that their activities be 
exercised for and in the interests of society. We can not under- 
stand this tendency unless we realize that while government is re- 
straint, restraint is not alone supplied by statutory enactment or by 
the police power. The power of wealth can be used to control and 
restrain the individual to as great a degree as can military power 
under a tyrant. With this understanding of the meaning of restraint, 
we see that under a democracy we may be compelled to restrain by 
public action under law individuals or corporations to the end of 
preventing their private restraint of others. We must shift, in other 
words, from private restraint to public restraint. Restraint by 
government is known as enforcement of law. Restraint by individ- 
uals is known as special privilege. But restraint by government 
agencies under democracy is inexcusable except as it is exercised for 
the general welfare. We can never foresee how far it must be ex- 
ercised. We can not foretell the extent of legal interference with what 
has loosely been called private business, nor can we define what con- 
stitutes private business. Business and commerce imply social rela- 
tions, and must inevitably be governed by social rules or social law. 
In the broad sense there can be no such think as private business, 
it is all a changing, relative matter, Wlien we ignore the facts of 
change and relativity and endeavor to bind our successors and our 
descendants to contracts we have made we are courting revolution. 

The Dartmouth College decision, in which the Supreme Court 
denied the right of the sovereign State to alter or abridge an act once 
passed, was an extreme case of dead-hand control. Previously in the 
case of Fletcher v. Peck, the Supreme Court had validated title to 
35,000,000 acres of land, which was secured from the Legislature of 
Georgia by proved corruption and bribery, and thus was established 
the doctrine that grants once made, even though bribery and fraud be 
used, are good for all time, and privilege is linked to the law beyond 
the possibility of destruction. 

The moral is plain. Get what you can in any Avay that is neces- 
sary and rely on the law and the courts to secure your tenure. Thus 
the forests and water powers, the ore, and the coal have passed into 
private hands in perpetuity, and perpetuity is so long a time that it 
is impudent to mention it. 

CONTROL THROUGH TAXATION. 

But failing other means of control or other means of resumption 
by the people, there rests, as yet safe from the courts, the power of 
taxation — the primal right of sovereignity, the beginning of gov- 
ernment of every sort, and the last final word in control. The pro- 
tection of this power and its utilization in the interests of society 
may yet prove to be the line of least resistance in abolishing 
special privilege and restoring equality of industrial opportunity — 
a task all agree must l)e accomplished if democracy and the fruits 



6 DEMOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY. 

of democracy are not to be crushed under the iron heel of financial 
oligarchy. 

It is in no glib sense that we say that democracy is an experiment. 
The problems of democratic efficiency have never been worked out. 
We know that it is an experiment at the present time, but we also 
know that the experiment must be made to succeed if the human race 
is to be worth while, for we are social beings and our brother is a part 
of ourselves, and there could never be life really worth living to the 
conscientious and the sensitive except in the hope and in the striving 
for better average conditions. As clouds return to the sea, so must 
men return to self-government. 

Referring to the restraint that the individual places upon society, 
we have with us George F. Baer, who, by his own confession, is the 
divinely appointed arbiter of the welfare of miners, operators, and 
consumers of coal. If his actions belie his divine appointment, dem- 
ocracy must encumber itself with the regulation of the production 
and supply of coal, despite his partnership with Providence. 

The history of the trusts is too well known to need much comment. 
The natural resources of the country as well as the fruits of our in- 
ventiveness in labor-saving machinery have been absorbed by a few. 
The many find themselves little benefited by the tremendous added 
product resultant therefrom. 

In the way of democratic control, the railways are being limited in 
issuing stock certificates; their rates are being regulated with some 
computation of capital invested. Now comes Mr. Brandeis to show 
how the Government should insist that they handle their business 
with less waste of time, of money, and of life. In the meantime they 
have been urged, through air-brake and other legislation, not to mur- 
der so many of their employees. Here is restraint in the interests of 
democracy carried down the line. 

In the matter of public utilities we ought to approach the question 
from the standpoint of common sense. Transportation, artificial 
light, water supplies are essential to all the people. The Government 
of all the people can either furnish them itself or license others to 
furnish them. If private individuals are licensed, it is first of all 
necessary that there should be the greatest possible elimination of the 
element of risk, in order that charges may be as low as is consistent 
with investment. To consider these conveniences as private institu- 
tions, to be controlled for private profit, is a violent assumption that 
can not be justified under any theory of law or of public welfare, for, 
after all, what does a man own or how does he maintain his title to 
what he thinks he owns? Follow the abstract of titles back to bar- 
baric beginnings. We find ourselves in a region of anarchy or indi- 
vidualism, where a man owned nothing except what he could hold by 
main strength. Then came organized society specifying that in its 
own behalf it would protect the individual in his title, and this be- 
came the law. Whenever the possession of anything, whether dyna- 
mite, concealed weapons, poison, or contagious germs, becomes inimi- 
cal to society, society takes upon itself the right of search, appropria- 
tion, quarantine, or vaccination. The same must forever hold true, 
however much sanctioned by former usage may have been the indi- 
vidual's possession to things which society has decided have become 
evils. As a minor conclusion, it follows that the power to take away 
carries with it a power to limit the tenur(j. 



DEMOCKACY AND EFFICIENCY. 



WHO CONSTITUTE " THE MOB 



From the beginning of history we have heard about "the mob," 
Aristophanes has much to say of it, as also did the framers of our 
Constitution. The mob — a vast, intangible, hypothetical something, 
prone to hysteria, revolution, and all manner of violence ! And yet 
we, the whole people, are the mob. It has been the boast of our 
Anglo-Saxon and Germanic historians that our efforts thus far have 
not been vain attempts to educate ourselves into a responsibility that 
makes the mob, or rather most of us, both responsible and demo- 
cratic. The so-called mob, clamoring for decent opportunity to live, 
is working for human advancement, as it is entitled to do. // de- 
mocracy Tnakes mistakes^ that is its privilege; and we^ holding to the 
theory of democracy^ should as fully admit the right of the people 
to make mistakes as to make progress. As long as we make profes- 
sion of a helief in democracy we must clearly carry this in mind. 
Those who pretend to Relieve in democracy., hut at the same time 
would hedge it about hy the checks and balances of an oligarchy, 
living or defunct^ are trying to mix two elements that can not inter- 
mingle. The power that gave the dog teeth and the mule his ti^sty 
hind leg did not check and balance hy muzzling the one or hohhling 
the other. Instead., there was demanded self-control. 

The crime in Virginia in which a judge was shot down in his court 
by the Allen outlaws has been vigorously portrayed in cartoon and 
comment throughout the country as an example of judicial recall. 
The misguided homicides of the Virginia mountains had, by their 
isolation through many years, failed to feel the touch of democracy 
and were simply unconscious individualists or anarchists. They be- 
lieved in aristocracy, and, like all that held that theory of indi- 
vidual license, they were quite sure that they were the aristocracy 
and were accordingly above the law. No more and no less anarchists 
were they than the masters of modern finance. No more and no less 
heedless were they of human life than those same organizers of 
trusts. Had prosecutor, judge, and jury met their deaths in a rail- 
road wreck, caused by defective rails, skimped by the Steel Trust, or 
by wretched roadbed or rotten ties that permitted stock watering 
without investment, it would have been regarded by financiers as an 
unfortunate act of Providence. 

THE REAL "MINORITY RULE." 

We hear continuously of the danger from oppression of the mi- 
nority by the majority under Democratic rule. As Mr. Koosevelt 
has pointed out, the oppression that we object to in this country has 
been the oppression by the minority working through corrupt or 
complicated government. 

Jane Addams has well said that the best service that can be ren- 
dered the world is to raise many people a little. That counts for a 
vast aggregate of happiness, whereas to afford exceptional opportu- 
nities to a privileged few does few of these few any good, although 
there occasionally may appear great geniuses and happy lives. 



DEMOCRACY AXD EFFICIENCY. 
" THE FATHERS " UNDEMOCRATIC. 



Experimenting, as it were, the founders of the Constitution filled 
it will checks and balances, distrustful of the use that the people 
would make of the opportunity to govern themselves. There was 
little conception of real democracy. Their theory, shown, for in- 
stance, in providing for the election of United States Senators by 
State legislatures instead of by the people. The method they estab- 
lished for selecting Presidents was that by town meeting or some 
other process wise men would be chosen to choose wiser men to choose 
a President. It was an attenuated system of representation, and just 
in so far as it denied full democracy in so far the system failed, be- 
came sordid, and resulted in something very different from expecta- 
tions. The theory of presidential electors was the first to go by the 
board without constitutional amendment and almost without com- 
ment. Tliis was a precursor of the direct primary. Later on the 
Constitution stumbled over the slavery issue. Xo one who has read 
the arguments of Calhoun and Webster can fail to realize that Cal- 
houn built upon the Constitution a structure of absolute logic, while 
Webster worked out a sincere but illogical opportunism. Lincoln, 
while expressing devotion to the Constitution, cut through the knot 
by an unanswerable logic which proved that whether or not seces- 
sion was constitutional, secession, at any rate, was anarchy and chaos 
in its ultimate analysis and the Constitution had to go. 

Looking back to the history of development of our Government, we 
find in the Xew England town meeting the simplest and most direct 
form of democracj' . It was a misfortune that as the numbers of the 
electorate increased the town-meeting theory of choosing men and 
deciding upon measures was lost. The trail forked. There might 
be either a triturated, diluted sj^stem of representation or a system 
providing for direct expression. We took the first and the nrrong 
trail. The town meeting found a degenerate sequence.^ a sort of verrm- 
form appendix^ in the party caucus. 

The rise of party government, which Washington foresaw and 
deplored, came in to make matters worse, and with it came the spoils 
system, which reached the zenith of its frankness under Jackson as 
President. " To the victor belong the spoils " sounded like a harsh 
but at least an honest statement, whereas really it was a doctrine of 
incompetence and what we now term graft. 

Lacking real issues, the parties became bodies without souls, en- 
cumberers of the earth chiefly existing for the purpose of favoring 
their adherents with the emoluments of public office and of public 
spoliation, and working not for the benefit of the country but for the 
benefit of a fraction of a faction. 

Until the great issues of slavery and secession came along this 
uselessness continued. Then came the birth of a new party with a 
real mission and a great leadership, a party which won the fight for 
national unity and human rights, and then proceeded to fatten and 
degenerate for lack of real tasks. One apparent issue survived, the 
doctrine of a protective tariff, w^hich, harmless and possibly ex- 
cusable or beneficial to begin with, grew into a doctrine of special 
privilege that held the party togetJier by the cohesive power of plun- 
der, its real motive, and by hypocritical profession of a desire to 
better the conditions of the American working man. 



DEMOCKACY AND EFFICIENCY. 9 

A long war was waged against the evil system of the spoils of 
office, a fight for civil-service reform or the merit system. The argu- 
ments for the merit system were, of course, to secure a determination 
of the applicant's fitness by competitive examination, reasonable cer- 
tainty of tenure in office, but most important of all to eliminate from 
control of Government machinery those receiving compensation for 
public service from the public purse ; to prevent public servants from 
becoming masters. This was the first step toward the restitution of 
popular government. 

HOW THE PARTT CAUCUS WORKED, 

Following this there came the movement looking to direct pri- 
maries. The old representative system had been seized upon by the 
bosses. It had to be operated by some one, the everyday voter could 
not spend the time, so necessity evolved the boss. The process of 
elimination ran something like this: Two or three men would get 
together and map out a party slate. There could be no legal restric- 
tion against such action, and a slate had to be made. Thereupon 
they would call such caucuses as seemed necessary, making sure that 
the caucus should be carefully selected and the chairman should agree 
to the program. If by any mischance there was an attempt to upset 
the caucus, the chairman was supposed to be able to handle the situ- 
ation. The secretary would announce whatever result he saw fit as 
the vote of the caucus and declare that the slate delegates had been 
selected. These delegates were part of the machinery, but were 
usually ostensibly unpledged and uninstructed. There was no legal 
control over the caucus, nor was there ever any success in trying to 
place such a voluntary part}^ assemblage under the law. 

The earlier forms of primary law permitted the party to call for 
an election of delegates under the law if they so chose, but the law 
was not mandatory and was frequently uninvoked. But whether 
under primary law or not the uninstructed delegates repaired to a 
convention, where they carried out their preconcerted program and 
the men originally selected by the few leaders, so called, were given 
their nominations. 

THE BIPARTISAN MACHINE. 

Of course it was the original theory that party rivalry would work 
toward the selection of the man who would most appeal to the popu- 
lar choice, but when the original slate makers consisted of repre- 
sentatives of both parties, working for their own interest and the 
interest of their friends, the bipartisan nominations became a fraud 
and a farce. Any leading politician of the party of the biparty 
convention who happened to be running for office could ordinarily 
select his opponent on the other ticket and, if he felt particularly 
insecure, could probably arrange to divide up the opposition by put- 
ting in the field more than one opposing candidate. 

All through this farcical theme ran the sweet melody of party 
loyalty and high-minded patriotism. The Indiana farmers, who 
have been proverbially fond of investing in gold bricks, never had 
such reason to complain of being buncoed in that gentle sport as they 
have had reason to complain of the way their politics have been 
handled under the pretext of representation. 



10 DEMOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY. 

RISE or THE DIRECT PRIMARY. 

Such development of representative government inevitably and 
logically drove the electorate to seek out a plan of nomination where- 
by the popular choice could be registered, and the next step, after 
civil-service reform, was found in the direct primary. 

Although the direct primary has many forms and has never been 
worked out to its final shape, it is at any rate a law-controlled oppor- 
tunity for the expression of individual opinion concerning candidates. 
It permits a man of self-respect to run for an office without having 
compromised his independence or his integrity by promises to those 
who hold the political power, simply because they hold it and know 
how to exert it. Here is a necessary reversion from a complicated sys- 
tem of representation to direct democracy. 

Then came the adoption of a direct vote for United States Senators, 
which emancipates the State legislatures by the elimination of na- 
tional partisan issues. 

MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION FORCED THE REFERENDUM. 

Next in order, there grew up a belief in the necessity of limiting 
the legislative actions of representative bodies. The most acute phases 
of corrupt misgovernment occurred in the cities, where the tremendous 
values of public utility franchises became understood. Grants of the 
privilege to furnish transportation, water, artificial light, became 
matters of barter and sale. 

In a brief experience in the city council of Chicago I saw a time 
when a few men could easily have obtained $50,000 apiece had they 
been willing to shift their votes. Of course it was easy to say that 
no honest man would take money for a vote on such a proposition, 
but the pressure is tremendous to those who can easily step from 
poverty to affluence for a vote which they would most likely give for 
nothing if they had not stopped to consider all the phases of the sit- 
uation. 

Against this sort of plunder of the public the checks and balances 
of the courts have been absolutely unavailing. In one case in Chi- 
cago, where it was shown that the street-frontage consents, without 
which no street railway franchise could have been granted, were all 
forged, the courts held that the council was the sole judge of what 
constitutes valid consent and therefore the ordinance was good, al- 
though the forgeiy was flagrant, notorious, and, the names being 
written in the same handwriting, showed on the surface. 

In one great fight nothing but an untoward fear of lynching pre- 
vented a bought legislature from delivering the goods. 

Turning in vain to the courts, people realized that there must be 
a popular check on this sort of exploitation, and so the next step 
they adopted the referendum, which, wherever installed, can be in- 
voked by petition against legislative acts and which, if carried, results 
in their nullification. 

THE RECALL. 

The cities furnished the chief motive for another reversion to pure 
democracy. The mayor of most cities occupies a position of greater 
executive power than any other official in the country. He is usually 



DEMOCKACY AND EFFICIENCY. 11 

the acting head of the police department and as such has under 
his direct control the granting of saloon licenses and the power to 
eliminate or to control and regulate the illicit business transacted 
in the cities, the gambling houses, and the dives, and may have much 
to say, if he chooses to say it, about the parceling out the privileges 
of pickpockets and confidence operators. 

Civil-service reform does not touch him ; his executive acts are not 
subject to referendum; and if he is elected and starts out to see what 
the job can be made to pay he is established for the term of his 
office in a position to demoralize public service and to levy tribute 
to his heart's content. 

People realized that the mayor's term under such conditions might 
be undesirably long, and so there arose a demand for the right of 
recall, which was more and more laying hold of the popular thought, 
as a necessary means of curbing executive dishonesty. 

NO SACRED CLASS. 

Concerning the recall of judges, the necessity of such public right 
is absolutely clear. In so far as they interpret the laws and the 
constitution they are lawmakers. That they should be held as a 
sacred class, a governing class, answerable to no one, is to concede 
to one branch of government a right to uncontrolled despotic power. 
Such power is being used to-day to curtail the functions of the 
correlative branches. 

THE INITIATIVE FUNDAMENTAL, 

Along this series of democratic measures, and far more funda- 
mental than any of the others, there has sprung up the idea of the 
initiative. Keferendum and recall are but checks upon representa- 
tive government — popular checks as opposed to constitutional checks. 
The initiative, on the other hand, represents direct popular rule and 
can be so framed as to do away with representative government in 
.:-.ertain specific cases. By the initiative a portion of the people may, 
by petition, place upon the ballot laws or constitutional amendments, 
which may be passed by the people directly and without submission 
to a legislature. Ordinarily the initiative provides that the laws 
thus framed shall be placed before the legislature and passed out by 
the legislature for the referendum vote, but recognition of the legis- 
lature is not necessarily involved in the procedure. The need of the 
initiative became apparent when, after years of stmggle, people 
find that from some influence or other their legislative bodies abso- 
lutely refuse to put upon the statute books laws that are generally 
demanded. 

At the beginning I stated that the great criticism of democratic 
government was its inefficiency as compared with tyranny or even 
with oligarchy. This inefficiency is not inherent in democracy, but is 
only part and parcel of the tentative growth of democratic govern- 
ment under our system of irrelevant party rule, divided responsi- 
bility, and misrepresentation and constitutional checks and balances. 



12 DEMOCEACY AND EFFICIENCY. 

COMMISSION GOVERNMENT. 

The cities are coming to believe that they can dispense with an 
enormous amount of government machinery, and along the line of 
promoting efficiency under democracy we find a step taken in the 
commission form of government, where a few men, each expert in 
some line of municipal housekeeping, shall not only be an executive 
over his own department but, together with the others, shall form 
the legislative body of the municipality. Here we are approaching 
an elective and a selective despotism, except — and here is the most 
important feature of our modern political evolution — these men are 
subject to the recall, their enactments to the referendum, and by the 
initiative there may be enacted laws in spite of them, if need be, 
which they might not wish to pass. 

I have used the illustration of the city in describing these devices 
because the city furnishes the simplest example as well as the excit- 
ing causes for change toward simplification. In California it has 
begun to be applied to county government, and we may not be sur- 
prised to soon see the principle applied to State government. 

GENUINE DEMOCRACY IS EFFICIENT. 

There is no reason why the Government should be inefficient in 
carrying out its executive functions. This is unnecessary because it 
is a result of an old system of checks and balances so complicated 
that it could not work. 

As far as we can learn there never has been in our time a great 
undertaking handled with less waste or with as much regard to the 
welfare of the public and the employees as the Panama Canal. Peo- 
ple loosely say that this is being done in contravention to the theo- 
ries of democracy. Nothing could be more absurd. There is not a 
voter in this country who would recall the present heads, either of the 
engineering or the sanitary work on the Isthmus, if he had a chance. 
Both these men hold their positions under a President elected by the 
people and who, if our theories were carried out, would be subject to 
recall for any unremedied abuses by his subordinates. 

The whole modern theory of government is that we must shorten 
the ballot as much as possible, provide a minimum of elective and a 
maximum of appointive offices, place great power and gi"eat responsi- 
bilities in the hands of a few, and then control them by direct popular 
action. 

THE CAUSE OF DEMOCRATIC INEFFICIENCY. 

The old constitutional checks and balances have but worked for 
inefficiency. The old idea of judicial precedent can not possibly be 
induced to fit changing conditions of modern life. The old system 
of representative rule working through the theory of government 
by a majority of a majority of a majority has fallen down and fallen 
apart. It has arrived not at majority rule, but at a nefarious system 
of rule by powerful and dictatorial minorities that most of all need 
money for success and are prepared to reciprocate in terms of special 
privilege, and so on around and around in an unending circle of cor- 
ruption and privilege. 



DEMOCRACY AND EFFICIENCY, 13 

No one experienced in politics but that knows and realizes the 
hunger of people for leadership. The man who will throw up hit, 
hat and say " Come on " will be followed by some one whatever 
direction he may take. Under direct democratic action he must 
seek out the individual voter; must show his argument and ask for 
support to accomplish a given thing. Under the old representative 
system he could do his work through uninstructed delegates, stuffed 
caucuses, and bought conventions. Under the schemes of direct 
democratic government a leader may be just as wrong in head oi 
heart as was the boss, but he must do his work in the light of day 
and subject to the analysis of all men who choose to think. 

The hope of democracy rests in the prospect of its being made 
democratic, in the hope of the right of suffrage being applied directly 
to men and to measures. 

Before my remarks are closed there is one matter of vital import 
which must be placed before you in few words, and that is this: 
That democracy being the highest social evolution, being the legiti- 
mate fruit of thousands of years of struggle, suffering, of blood and 
tears, is not the possession of inferior peoples, is not possible to the 
undeveloped. It represents the schooling, the self-control that can 
only come as an inheritance of ages. 

The kind of democracy that we preach, that we believe in, that 
we hope to practice, can only be applied by those fitted by education, 
by temperament, and by heredity to exercise the functions of gov- 
ernment temperately and calmly in the interests of all. 

The attempt to apply our ideals to unformed peoples prone to 
superstition and hysteria w^ould be but to wreck them to belittle tht. 
message of democracy. 

We in America have thus far fostered and maintained a popu- 
lation which is capable of exercising the functions of self-govern- 
ment. There has been, it is true, a terrible breakdown in the attempt 
to apply democratic rule under reconstruction in the South, where a 
race incapable of self-government became, by the exigencies of war, 
by short-sighted opportunism, a part of the electorate. This awful 
failure only emphasizes the point I am urging. We, the people of 
the United States, at the present time are as an average of a sort 
that is fit and capable of governing ourselves if free from alien 
troubles, if free from hostilities of race prejudice, whether such 
prejudice arise from a sense of race inferiority or not; if free from 
such handicaps, we can work out our problems in spite of our own sel- 
fishness, our own greed, our own short-sightedness, but we can not 
possibly solve these problems when confronted with racial prejudice 
and racial differences. All this, however, is another story and is 
merely mentioned here as a necessary corrollary to the discourse 
preceding. 

The great religious reformation was an attempt to do away with 
the machinery between man and his God. The modern reformation 
of the United States is an attempt to eliminate the parasitic middle- 
man from between the voter and his candidate or his laws. 

William Kent. 

o 



